3 Best Mid-Range Gaming Laptops : Holidays 2016

The Best Gaming Laptops For Your Money?

By that, I mean the laptops that offer the best gaming performance at a given price. Because if you’re about to buy a gaming laptop, you want the one that offers the best performance possible for your budget, right?

If you have the time to do research… but who does?

You don’t have the time to read or the knowledge to understand detailed laptop reviews and specifications and just want the answers? In other words, what you want to know is:
“What’s the best gaming laptop for my budget?”

So if you don’t have the time, don’t worry. We’re here to help you with this article.

Alternatives recommendations:

We also sometime suggest alternative recommendations, with clear explanations as to why they are interesting alternatives. That way, you can easily choose the best laptop to answer YOUR needs and desires.

Put all of this together and you get this article: The Best Mid-Range Gaming Laptops!

A reminder:

My recommendations in this article are based on the prices that I saw on November 27th 2016. Prices and availability change all the time. While I can’t keep up with ever changing prices, I do recommend to you what are in my professional experience the best laptops around a price point.

Leave a comment if you have a question, a suggestion and/or any feedback that you want to share.

Summary

Click on any of these links to jump to the section that interests you, or scroll down to see them all, in this order.

Best Gaming Laptop for less than $900

Acer Nitro Black Edition 15.6″ VN7-592G-72VQ

Equipped with a Nvidia Geforce 960M (4GB GDDR5) dedicated GPU, a powerful Intel Core i7-6700HQ and 16GB of RAM, the Acer Nitro Black Edition offers good performance and is quite portable for a gaming laptop, at .9″ thick and 5.07lbs.

For its price it delivers better performance than other builds who generally offer a 2GB 960M Nvidia Gefore instead, a slower CPU and less RAM.

The only thing that it really lacks is a better hard drive and/or an SSD. Then again, that’s something that you can upgrade.

Best Gaming Laptop for less than $1000

ASUS FX502VM

Compared to the Acer above, this laptop is a significant upgrade in performance, with the latest generation Nvidia Geforce 1060. While the 1060 might not seem like a big upgrade from the 960, it is a massive upgrade in performance.

To give you an idea, the Geforce GTX 1060 offers about 25% more performance than the Geforce 980m graphic card, which itself is easily over two times faster than the 960m.

You get a slightly less powerful processor than the Acer Nitro, the i5-6300HQ, but since you get much more powerful graphic card, you’ll still get far better gaming performance.

You get 16GB of RAM which is perfect to run multiple programs and a 1TB hard drive to store all your content and games.

Best gaming laptop for less than $1250

ASUS ROG Strix GL502VM 15.6″

With this gaming laptop, you get a powerful Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU, a Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 graphic card with 6GB of VRAM graphic card, a 1920 x 1080 screen, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive.

Compared to the recommendation above, this is a major upgrade for different reasons. First of all, you have a better CPU going to the i7-6700HQ from the i5-6300HQ. You a graphic card with twice the memory (6GB vs 3GB).

The best part is getting Nvidia G-Sync, which syncs your display and graphic card, to prevent screen tearing and minimize stutter and input lag. This makes your gaming experience smoother and better.

On top of that this laptop is extremely portable for a gaming laptop as it only weights 4.8 lbs. Anything below 5lbs is light for a gaming laptop. As a matter of a fact, you couldn’t get a gaming laptop that powerful and that lightweight until now, thanks to the new 10xx series Nvidia graphic cards.

Pretty much all games should be playable at a 1920 x 1080 resolution with high or maxed out details.

This is one of the best mid-range gaming laptop for your money as of today.

The hard drive doesn’t offer the responsiveness and performance of a SSD.

Upgrade your Laptop:

Upgrade your RAM:

RAM can easily be upgraded on most laptops. Do note that some laptops cannot be upgraded at all, due to their unique design. A quick google search should provide that info. Feel free to ask me in the comment section if you aren’t sure and can’t find the info.

Some laptops accept hard drives with a 7mm height, others with a 9.5mm height.

Upgrade to a SSD or upgrade your current SSD to get higher capacity and/or higher performance!

A SSD (Solid State Drive) is far faster than a hard drive (See our SSD FAQ) and it also consumes less power than a hard drive, so replacing a hard drive by a SSD will slightly boost your laptop’s battery life.

This particular enclosure comes with a retractable cable that is connected to the enclosure, so you don’t lose/forget it and it makes the whole package more compact too. It comes with an extension cord if you need it.

Looking for a different external case or need a specific cable? Leave a comment if you need assistance with finding what’s best for your needs.

USB DVD and Blu-Ray Drives

If your laptop doesn’t come with an optical drive and you want one, here are my recommendations for external USB optical drives.

About The Author

HR Founder - Computer expert with over 16 years of experience in building, fixing and modifying PCs.
Over the years, I’ve developed a passion for PC hardware and now I enjoy helping others build their own PCs!
In April 2008, I launched Hardware Revolution and ... Read more at my about page

Did you enjoy this article? Support us by making a donation!

You can support Hardware Revolution by making a donation, by clicking here or using the button.

This website is my job, I must pay for staff and hosting, as well as cover my living costs.

How much should you donate? Think about how much money and time that I've helped you save. Offer me a coffee, a beer, a meal, an evening out, etc. Donate what you can. Anything is appreciated.